Long before coupon blogs were popular, long before television shows about extreme couponing filled the airways, my friend Andrea and I would sit in the church nursery nursing our newborn sons and talk about the deals she’d found working a couponing system. It was amazing this skill she’d acquired. As she perfected it, she started teaching classes to women all over the central Kentucky area on how to save money the way she did. She is a master at it, and is an amazing teacher. For instance, look at the 50 things she got for free in February this year.

While the cost of everything seems to be going up, rapidly, I can tell you that my husband’s pay hasn’t gone up in the last year. NOT that I’m complaining. I’m SO thankful has has a job, locally, and isn’t having to work 8,000 miles away anymore. But, health insurance costs doubled (why is everyone so surprised that happened?), and his paycheck doesn’t stretch like it used to.

So, what are we doing to adjust to the higher costs of goods but the same pay? Here are just a few ideas:

If you want this template to use, leave a comment here asking me to email it to you. When you leave a comment, if you input it correctly in the form, I’ll have your email address. Don’t ask on the Facebook page or in an email to me — if we do it all here in the comments, then I’ll be able to keep up with who got it and who didn’t.

The other day, Kroger had butter on sale for $2.29 per pound. Gregg called me and said that the Aldi in Lexington had butter for $1.89 per pound as a regular, non-sale price. Aldi is a super discount grocery store. I told Gregg I didn’t necessarily know about getting butter from there. He stopped and bought one pound just for me to check it out.

Last year, I wrote about the budgeting spreadsheet that I created in Excel to manage my household expenses. This was an INCREDIBLY popular post, and many people asked for a copy of the spreadsheet to be emailed to them.

Several months ago, our local Kroger had turkeys on sale for 59¢ a pound. I checked with Heather at Couponning 101 if that was a good deal, because I typically just shop for meat and staples at the commissary. She told me it was, so I bought two of them.

Hi, My name is Heather and I’m a super coupon junkie. I have a really hard time paying full price for anything and beyond that, I’m in it for the rush! There’s a thrill to stand at the checkout and watch the total $$ go down as the total savings goes up… I’m a huge fan of couponning and making every sale work for me, so much that I actually blog about it at http://couponning101.blogspot.com

Being a guest blogger on Hallee’s site is kinda like going to my first AA meeting – I’m sharing my addiction with you… but unlike AA, this addiction can save you tons of money a year on your groceries no matter where you live in the USA

A friend’s blog post from this week inspired me to write this today. She blogged about taking over their family’s finances and looking forward to the coming year and seeing what she can do about emergency funds and vacation funds and such.